Scout Academy

I saw this movie and thought it was pretty darn funny. The plot is original and the acting is true. Richard Belzer, Richard Louis and John Goodman were great. And Louie Anderson did a great job as the cute-as-a-button momma's boy!! 3 stars!!

Big fan of 80's movies and B movies. Underrated allstar cast. its clean, fun comedy suitable for the whole family. Especially entertaining was scene of cast as children. take a watch, pretty good.

This film starts out as your basic camping comedy. Like all camping comedies it decides to ditch the simple camping going wrong and go somewhere completely different. Sort of like how the first two Meatball films turned to having a competition with the rival camp or how Ernest Goes To Camp turned to a save the camp with the delinquent kids plot. So we have the save and the rivalry. This one does do something different veering it away from crazy camping hijinks and it is a bit of a darker tone as it becomes a homicidal maniac goes after our guys cause he thinks they are FBI or something.

The story has a group of old friends from a scout troop having a reunion. This team failed their last mission, having gotten severely lost the last time they got together. Their group is made up of mainly comedians from Louis Anderson to Richard Belzar. They also have B movie mainstay Tim Thomerson. John Goodman plays the maniac who along with two other fugitives from the law goes after the troop. His character is at times to dark for the film, then at times becomes goofy as he shoots down a pancake sign. He just does not seem to know where to go and he goes everywhere.

The film itself is a somewhat funny comedy. It starts out as them having a few misadventures then turns to them trying to escape the madman. While this turn is a bit to dark at times, it adds something original to a formulaic film. It also has two guys who were kicked out of the troop still holding a grudge and these two guys have some of the funnier moments in the film. So while not an excellent comedy of the past, it does have its moments and is a bit more than your standard camping comedy.

I saw this movie when it first came to the theaters in 1988 and though I knew it wasn't of award winning caliber...I kinda liked it. It tells the tale of 5 former cub scouts reuniting to take on the one task they never got to finish as kids - which is to climb Mt. Whitehead. Of course now the cub scouts are all grown up and have developed their personalities in a variety of ways, but none too differently than they were as children. Richard Lewis is still neurotic, Richard Belzer is still a playboy, Franklyn Ajaye is still sort of the Dear Abby of the group, and Tim Thomerson is still the surfer dude of the group. Of course the top billed star is Louie Anderson, a "true believer" in everything Cub Scout related. He still lives in the same house with his mother, still goes over the Cub Scout manual daily, is brave, reverent and clean, and is the one who reunites the others for one more grand adventure in Scouting. Compounding their task, however, is the Grunski brothers, two bullies drummed out of the Cub Scouts by the above mentioned. By coincidence they run into their old den and decide to harass them a bit, albeit harmlessly. Not so harmlessly is three escaped convicts, who think Pack 7 is from the FBI and are intent on wiping them out. All in all, the movie still has bits of charm. Observe Richard Lewis trying to get comfortable on a folding cot, for example, and you have a really funny bit going for you. Upon further review, the entire film needed more of that type of observational humor. It doesn't hold up well after all these years but still remains a guilty pleasure.

Hindered by a lack of budget, in that what is really needed is a better hand at editing and cinematography, what remains is a silly, heartfelt romp.

Look at the cast: John Goodman, Ernie Hudson, Louie Anderson, Richard Belzer and Richard Lewis. Each of the stand ups are given a chance to show off, most notably Lewis's dealing with a demon wood cot.

Far from a perfect film, it has moments that anyone that camps for recreation with find almost unbearably funny, simply because it is true. Watching Lewis fight the cot, while another man is fighting one of those wretched tin tent stakes, trying to put up a Voyager style tent better suited for a MASH unit than an overnight camp, was so close to several of my own Cub Scout, and Boy Scout memories, that I was actually, indeed, laughing out loud.

Here is a film that should be remade, with the original cast and script.